Basic Needs
by BlueOmegaWolf
Summary: Post 'The Great Game'.  Sherlock experiments with his emotional detachment, Molly blushes and John gets a good laugh at his friend*ahem*colleague.  SH/MH  Rating raised for chapters 2 onwards
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: My first real Sherlock fic! I'm excited! I just can't help but feel that the Sherlock - Molly relationship is too good to ignore, although writing from a sociopath's (albeit high-funtioning) point of view, especially after watching the episodes! But this idea came to me having watching Sherlock charm Molly once again, and it occurred to me, _what happened after The Great Game?_ I know there are other fics out there, but I wanted to do my own take xD Please do review, and tell me what you think! Also, there might be a lemon in the pipeline if it is so wanted, so rating may change...**

**Disclaimer: Unfortunately, the great Conan-Doyle owns Mr Holmes, and the BBC owns Sherlock...and Benedict Cumberbatch is not mine (Unfortunately!)**

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><p>Basic needs, those which he had learnt to suppress, rose when he had nothing to do. The wall was still grinning, that bright yellow smile watching him as Sherlock Holmes looked unenthusiastically around the flat. John was at Sarah's; it didn't take a genius to figure that one out. He often did that now, disappeared to Sarah's, leaving Sherlock to wallow in boredom. He obviously didn't value the walls. The consulting detective huffed a sigh and levered himself off the couch, stepping over the coffee table and into his room, throwing his blue dressing gown onto the bed rather violently. He swapped flannel PJs for a crisp white shirt and his favourite black, Spencer and Hall suit, and then Sherlock snatched his scarf and coat and hailed a cab for St Bart's. Molly would let him in; besides, he thought he should probably check that she was still there. He needed that connection at the morgue, or he wouldn't be able to waltz in there as he did currently, Molly was the only person he could charm enough to allow him unlimited access.<p>

The cab pulled into the curb, and Sherlock threw a few notes through the window before he strode into the hospital and down to the mortuary. He knew Molly was on duty, he'd been here at this time before, and when she saw him push through the door to the lab, her eyes immediately fell to the floor.

"Hello, Molly."

"Sherlock." She greeted him bluntly, he hadn't been in since the Moriarty case, not that it mattered of course. It wasn't like finding out your boyfriend was a psychopath was terrifying or anything. She didn't notice (the floor was too interesting) that Sherlock had opened his mouth to speak.

"I nee-"

"You'll need a permit."

That threw him. He hadn't thought that Molly would put up any fight. It wasn't like he'd done anything wrong! He thought giving her time to herself after the Moriarty number was the right thing to do. Molly evidently had other ideas, besides, now that 'Jim from IT' was gone, it meant he had to keep ignoring her blushes, giggles and general give aways that it was him she wanted.

"Have you changed your eye make-up?" He put his head to one side; she looked up at him with a cool expression. Not working. "It brings out the colour in your eyes, I like it." He flashed her a smile and saw a few sheets of ice melt in her gaze - time to turn up the dazzle-factor. He smiled slyly and stroked his thumb across her cheek; he had already taken his gloves off, looking at the glimmering blusher that clung to it. "Somehow I don't think that this is necessary with those cheeks, you have nice cheekbones – defined." That was it, all it took. She turned away, he heard her intake of breath, saw her arm move to trace the line across her cheek.

"Go on." She responded simply, waving the arm in the direction of the morgue. "I'll be down in a minute to make sure you're not waking the dead in there."

Sherlock strutted through the door she had gestured to, his expression only describable in one word: smug. He supposed John would be angry at the way he manipulated Molly. John was often angry. If it got him where he wanted, Sherlock didn't see the problem, she never expected him to go any further than the slightest hint of flirting anyway.

In the lab, Molly was desperately trying to reduce the Sherlock-induced blush that heated her face. She hated the way he could simply smile and she literally melted. It was the _eyes_. No, forget that. It was _Sherlock._ She took a few deep breaths and followed him. The detective was looking at a corpse that hadn't yet been zipped back up, natural causes. Silence, then they heard a gurgle which definitely wasn't Molly.

"Sherlock, are you...hungry?" She asked in disbelief.

"I'm not working."

"That's not an answer. Have you eaten?" She knew he didn't eat whilst working. _Digesting slows me down_, she mentally quoted.

"No. Couldn't be bothered. No suspicions about this death?" He was trying to change the subject, and was proved unsuccessful when his stomach rumbled again.

"Oh for God's sake, I'll grab you something."

A few minutes later, she returned with two coffees and a cheese sandwich, it turns out Bart's cafeteria at 10pm was not all that creative with their food. Sherlock smiled almost gratefully and quickly ate, taking a few sips of his coffee. Only he would be able to eat whilst analysing a corpse! This body was boring. Everything was boring. What was up with all the interesting murderers at the moment? Sherlock heaved another sigh, looking over at Molly, sitting together drinking coffee, he felt almost normal (how hideous!) and for once decided to embark in a conversation that didn't involve him trying to win Molly over for his own gain.

"How have you been, since the Jim Moriarty thing?" He asked gently, she seemed surprised that he was speaking at all.

"Well, not well obviously, but ok, I'm surviving. I'd feel better knowing he wasn't skulking around somewhere with all those contacts and snipers intact." She shuddered slightly. After Sherlock had aimed the handgun at the jacket, the snipers had run, leaving him, John and Moriarty. He had put together a plan, yanking the John's jacket off him and setting fire to it, throwing it next to the jacket, a time-bomb. Then, Sherlock, spotting the red lights had disappeared, had taken one shot, right in Moriarty's foot. Then they ran, running for their lives again, making it just out of the way of the blast before most of the swimming pool went up. He thought he had gone, until he got an email from an anonymous address the next day, signed Moriarty.

"Well, I don't think he'd come after you. You know who he is, he probably slipped up around you to keep in character, and he'd be worried about encountering you again. Besides, he knows you have connections to me and won't want to confront that again in a hurry." Sherlock tried to be comforting, offering a weak smile in her direction. He wasn't sure whether it was genuine or whether he was acting like usual. He gave up on the body and went back without a word to the lab. Molly followed, she always would, picking up his abandoned coffee and zipping the body bag up.

"You're probably right."

"Yes, I am." Pause. "What do you see in me, Molly?"

She looked at the floor, heat flushing her face again. She would ask what he meant, except she knew perfectly well.

"I..." She looked briefly at him, his face was expectant. "You're a genius, Sherlock, what wouldn't people see in you? Surely I'm not the only one?" She quickly turned the question round to him.

"People normally just find me odd." He shrugged casually, Molly had to look away - she was losing coherent thought.

"You're gorgeous. Oh God. I said that out loud." Molly stared at the floor, letting out a few profanities as she glared daggers at her foot. Now she had done it. Sherlock looked triumphant.

"Aha!" He cried. "Really now?" He grinned, a smile which soon fell when he noted she was no longer looking at him, which according to her recent revelations, she liked to do. It bothered him and so, in a mimic of the movement he had made earlier, he tilted her chin upwards on two fingers. There was a hiss as she drew in breath, no point in hiding that now, and Molly reluctantly looked back up at Sherlock.

"Damn you." She muttered. "You heartless idiot, you."

"Now, I thought you knew I'd been reliably informed I don't have one. Do behave, Molly." He purred, one edge of his mouth twitching upwards in a crooked grin. Her chin still rested on his fingers, he could feel her breathing, shallow and fairly quick, watched as her gaze fell from his eyes, across one cheek and rested on his lips. His self-restraint sounded alarm bells in his head. Sherlock silenced it. _Screw that. I'm experimenting_. He thought, just testing out the extent of his emotional detachment. With that reason in mind, he tilted her chin a little more and lowered his lips to hers, kissing her gently. He smiled inwardly as she gasped into his mouth and allowed him to trace her lower lip with his tongue. As with everything he did, Sherlock made a point of doing this _extraordinarily_ well. Were it not for the fact he had moved one hand to the small of her back, and her arms had wound around his neck, he had a suspicion poor Molly might've collapsed. She kissed him back, allowing his tongue to inch its way into her mouth. An alarm rang loudly somewhere in his head. He ignored it, this was an experiment after all, and it wasn't like he was enjoying it or anything. Ahem. In fact, Sherlock only began to realise the alarm bell was important when he found himself drawing her closer, his instincts yearning for the release he felt as she buried one hand in his dark curls.

When his phone beeped, Sherlock faded back into his normal, hyper-active stream of conscious thought, slowly feeling sanity return to him as he broke away slightly from Molly, his forehead resting against hers. He was breathing heavily, as was she, as he checked the screen of his phone. _John_. He was meant to be back in the flat by midnight. He'd forgotten that.

"John." He muttered, knowing Molly would hear. He hated the gut feeling he had that told him he needed a reason to leave. He would shrug this off as another of his heartless ploys for a gain of some kind. He would work out exactly for what later. Probably. Disentangling himself from her, Sherlock vanished from the lab in a manner of moments. A few moments later, she felt her phone buzz in her pocket.

_To be continued. SH_

Molly smiled to herself, knowing that it wouldn't. Sherlock returned to Baker Street, knowing she wouldn't believe him, hell, he wasn't sure he believed himself. John was sat in the arm chair.

"You look...dishevelled." He commented, raising one eyebrow at the detective's hair and crumpled shirt collar. Sherlock merely hmmed. "Where've you been?"

"Bart's."

"Doing what?"

"Experimenting." Not exactly a lie. John didn't look convinced.

"Run into a particularly rowdy corpse?" That was the last straw, Sherlock turned, resting one hand on each arm of John's chair.

"John, I think I've done something remarkably stupid." John tipped his head to one side. "I kissed Molly Hooper."

"You _what?_"

"You heard me perfectly well. I'm not saying it again." Sherlock growled. John said nothing and his flatmate's mouth twitched in frustration before he stalked into his room.

Back at Bart's, Molly's phone buzzed yet again as she was walking out the door.

_221b Baker Street. You coming? SH_

She stood for a moment, then hailed a cab, and opened the door before calling through the window.

"Baker Street. 221b."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Horribly sorry for such a long wait for chapter 2! But, no lemony-ness yet...But the rating has gone up for themes in this chapter and the next installment.**

It was half an hour after Sherlock arrived home when the door to 221b was knocked. It was a few minutes before John and Sherlock realised Mrs Hudson hadn't actually opened the door as normal and the detective was awakened from his thoughtful stupor by the buzzing of his Blackberry.

_Are you going to leave me out in the cold?_

_MH_

He shook his head and stood, ignoring the quizzical look from his flatmate as he did so, and eventually opened the door to a cold-looking Molly.

"Of course not. Didn't hear the door go." He quickly fabricated. "Here, let me take that and I'll get John to put the kettle on." He offered as way of apology, helping her coat from her shoulders to carry it upstairs. Obviously she had come straight from work and was wearing pale blue jeans and a plain green t-shirt. She had, however, banished the smell of the morgue with perfume, Sherlock noted as his brain ran its constant cycle of observe, process, deduce. He was running through the situation. Number one: he had kissed Molly. Number two: he planned to do a _lot _more. Number three: Molly was at their flat. Number four: his pulse was up from its normal, reptilian pace. A question flashed for a millisecond within his expansive mind – could he actually be attracted to Molly Hooper? Following her up the stairs, he immediately dreaded whatever John would have waiting for him. Fortunately, he needn't have done – the piss-taking would come after Molly had left and the doctor was merely, as he thought he would have to anyway, perusing the cupboards of the kitchen for a non-toxic mug to use for coffee.

"Thank you, John." Sherlock nodded sharply to his flatmate and companion in as many cases as he could remember (which was of course all) since they had started renting the flat. The doctor smiled, depositing the steaming mugs upon the coffee table and making some excuse that Sherlock acknowledged but decided wasn't crucial. No doubt he was being socially acceptable again, leaving Sherlock and Molly to talk alone. The detective, as always, understood the motive and took the opportunity to approach the subject of 'earlier'.

"Sorry for leaving you so suddenly earlier. I realised I'd left John here when I'd promised to be back on time."

"But you never do anything the way anybody tells you." She retorted.

"True, however, on this occasion I was trying to prove a point. He's been acquiring a habit of forgetting times and places we're meant to be recently since he's been seeing Sarah more often." Sherlock almost growled the other woman's name – damn her for stealing away his most useful ally in his crime-solving duties. Sat next to each other on the sofa, Molly cocked her head to one side, puzzled by Sherlock aversion to John actually having a life outside of Baker Street. "She's lovely enough, but does he really have to spend _that_ much time with her?" The tall man continued, turning to Molly and fixing her with an irritated yet questioning stare.

Those eyes. There was something in those molten depths that made Molly at this moment want to throw herself at him and say in her huskiest, most sultry voice that she would show him why John spent so much time with that woman. However, the mouse that she was, Molly couldn't bring herself to even utter a squeak of agreement. Instead, she simply lost the self-discipline she had promised herself after her last meeting with Sherlock and allowed her gaze to trail down, across his lips to the open shirt-collar where the detective's collar bone lay, just peeking out from under the crisp white fabric.

Sherlock's brain was calculating again. He had managed the emotional detachment of earlier, when he had kissed Molly, but how would that fair up if things got carried away? He found Molly endearing, yes, and if the detective was utterly – almost cruelly – honest with himself, he had enjoyed kissing her earlier. However, he needed to know he could still remain the stony presence in the backdrop of the majority of London's crime and be romantically involved simultaneously. Tonight was the night to test that level of discipline. He registered the trail that Molly's eyes followed down his jaw, down his neck with a half-smirk. It had started.

"Molly?" He feigned questioning in his voice, as if she had missed something he had said. When she looked up, embarrassed and confused, Sherlock merely smiled to her wryly.

"What?" She tried to meet his gaze, but thought better of it, knowing she wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything he said if she did.

"Do shut up." He growled, a sly expression working its way across his face, before he had turned to face her on the sofa and grasped her face in his hands, softly pulling her towards him so he could, for the second time that evening, claim her lips with his. Unlike the first time Sherlock Holmes kissed Molly Hooper, she did not hesitate to allow him to hold her to him, to explore her mouth inextricably, to run a thumb across the pulse in her neck. Instead, she clung to him, yielding to every whim and motion that he made, curling his dark hair around her fingers to keep hold. He, on the other hand, was in utter control, one hand keeping her pressed against him, one softly caressing her neck. The position they ended up in was one that was never going to be comfortable on a sofa, and so, with gentle guidance, Sherlock pushed Molly back so he was above her and she was reclined against the arm, his hands either side of her holding him up. It was then that John walked back in.

Footsteps were all it took for Sherlock to immediately cease his ministrations to Molly's mouth and glare at the doorway where the doctor was stood, mouth hanging open in what could only be described a sheer shock.

"Yes?" Sherlock snarled, irritated at having been interrupted and at John's dumbfound surprise at finding his flatmate in such a situation.

"I...uh...Nothing. I'll be at," he coughed, "Sarah's." With that, Dr Watson quickly retreated from the room. Sherlock chuckled darkly into Molly's cheek.

"Now that's a face I will never forget." He murmured, laughter creeping into his voice. "Do you think it would have been any funnier to watch him, if he'd seen, for instance, this?" He crooned, one finger brushing along her collarbone, gently persuading her t-shirt from one shoulder as he laid delicate kisses down her neck and down the strap of her bra to the hem of the shirt which now lay at the top of her bust. He smiled as Molly shudder under him and slowly pushed the shirt off the other shoulder, so that he now had more access to a larger expanse of skin, which he proceeded to cover in feathery kisses. Growing more adventurous by the second, Sherlock sucked softly at the skin just above the top edge of Molly's bra, his tongue drawing lazy patterns over the flesh, smoothly until the moment her hands tangled in his hair to pull him ever closer. Then it struck him: what he was doing, what he planned to do, what he didn't know that he was going to do afterwards. Sherlock decided to be honest with poor, mousey Molly, reluctantly bringing his head up to her again, resting his forehead against hers.

"This might not work, Molly, you know. I have to see if I can still do what I do as well as I do it, I can't have you getting in the way of that." He knew it sounded callous, but Sherlock was making a valiant attempt to regain some of his asexual insensitivity, even as he watched Molly's dilated pupils flicker around his face. "My work comes first."

"I know that." Molly nodded, her voice husky. She would agree with him whatever he said.

"Once is all that I will guarantee. From there, it's touch and go. We'll see how things fare up." When she nodded, he smiled again, shedding his cold facade for the last time that night, allowing himself the freedom of emotion and feeling. It probably wasn't a wise idea for Sherlock to rid Molly of her t-shirt once and for all, and her to work down the buttons of his shirt where they were on the sofa, but as John had said – he was seeing Sarah. The detective shuddered as Molly's hands left trails upon his bare chest, as if she was committing it to memory. He wouldn't blame her – this might be the only time that this ever happened, he would probably regret it only being once if it was.

Except, with Sherlock's best line of defence down, within the deepest recesses of his mind, Sherlock knew this wouldn't be the first _and _last time. He would not let Molly Hooper go.


End file.
